Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, War Commentary

“…Only Enemies Or Vassals”

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Michael Totten reports from Tbilisi.

On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women–Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya–who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. “We left the cattle,” Lia said. “We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible.” Diana’s account: “They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators.” And Nana: “We are so heartbroken. I don’t know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning.”

Maybe they exist, but I haven’t seen any eyewitness accounts of the supposed atrocities by the Georgians that Russia claims started this.

And be sure to hit his tip jar. It’s how he affords to do this reporting.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Buyer’s Remorse

Victor Davis Hanson previews what’s sure to burst forth among many in Denver next week:

Democrats wanted a bison and got Obambi, whose new ‘take no prisoners’ rhetoric in front of the VFW sounds like the Italian army in North Africa not the Desert Rats. Just imagine had Obama written “Dreams From My Grandmother” about a working-class white woman who moved to Hawaii sacrificing her all, stressing integration, conciliation, character, and hard work (all true), rather than future career-in-mind idealization and myth-making about a polygamist, alcoholic and absentee Marxist father? Had he done the former, he would have gotten a small advance, few sales–and now bankable proof of his character, rather than money, sales–and an embarrassing revelation of his PC credentials. Harvard Law Review is as essential to wowing a tiny irrelevant Eastern elite as it is meaningless to proving to mid-America that you can easily size up a thug like Putin, see through Euro-trash nonsense, or get some energy leverage back from the mullahs and House of Saud.

The Democrats expected an in-the-tank liberal press to publish charts and graphs of how the “progressive” FDR Obama was better for the blue-collar-worker than the Tom Dewey Republican. Instead they got the last gasp of the 1960s spoiled-brat loudmouths, ranting and frothing how an Obama could at last reify their own narcissistic, guilt-ridden pretensions. The amen-stable at Newsweek, for example, would not have been hired there as copy-editors in the 1960s. If Chris Matthews thinks his tingle up the leg giddiness helps Obama, or Sen. Obama’s race speech is the new Gettysburg Address, he doesn’t know Bakersfield or Dayton. A Keith Olbermann rant is a veritable McCain campaign ad.

Yup.